pet peeve

people who force me to interact socially in the morning. I feel all those "good mornings" directed at me when I obviously didn't initiate said interactions are vaguely ominous. if i want to talk to you in the morning I will; if not, please do not make me.

that is all

Opportunities

In about a week I head to Greece for two glorious weeks of paid vacation! I'm really excited about going somewhere completely new, taking a break from my everyday life and satisfying my travel lust.

When I get back, I will be training for a completely new job. Right now I am training coworkers to take over all my duties and that favor will be returned after my vacation. It's going to be interesting over here and I am not adverse to learning new things. And now for something completely different!

a three tiered fork in the road

I've come to a point in my life where everyone around me is experiencing the tug of change. And I can't be immune. Friends are applying to graduate school (both masters and PhDs), leaving the country, leaving jobs, being laid off, searching for something more fulfilling. I essentially believe that in the next year I need to decide on a path. Here are my options as I see them:

1) stay in the office/corporate world and try to move closer to the production & creative side.

It took a lot of work to get my foot in the door and I am reluctant to walk away from the opening. I am also hopeful that in a few years the economy will recover and I will have enough of a TV network and experience in the workplace to jump up the ladder a few rungs. After all, I now a have a job in my field. Cons are a tense workplace and a non creatively challenging job.

2) get a master's in education and become a teacher.

This would be a quarter life crisis move. I could become a teacher, get paid more, play with kids, and do something more along my personality line. I know it's hard work but I love kids and I think I could really get a kick out of teaching. Cons are that it is not related to film/media. But at a high school level...there's wiggle room. Education is a reliable field choice with a high demand and good benefits.

3) go to graduate school in Media/Film Studies

This is the passion, the dream. However, it is expensive, debt-inducing and in no way promising of a future career in Film or Media. A big indulgence with high risk- but really fun. Kind of foreboding in this kind of economy. Also does not really address my interest in production.

I'm hoping two weeks in the Grecian sun will pull an epiphany out of me!

District 9

The first movie I've seen in months...only because on two nights in a row, the BF's friends were all planning to go and I got dragged along. I'd read reviews that said the movie was good for what it was- a low budget scifi action thriller. An alien spaceship comes to a halt above Johannesburg and the humans rescue the stranded aliens and put them in District 9, a concentration camp/apartheid metaphor.

There were plenty of problems with this movie. Logic questions, character questions. Too many explosions. A bad guy who realllly would not die. Extremely masculine and women play nothing than brief plot blips. And it really hit you over the head with the alien-human metaphor of "who really is the monster/alien/unknown/other."

But I liked it! It was enjoyable to a film student because it was a big stinky piece of popular culture, just ripe for deconstruction. What paper material! What classroom fodder! It switched from documentary style to action movie midstream, which was an interesting shift to try and pass by an audience. The main character was also such a douche bag at the beginning but by the end he is our Byronic hero. It was compelling, well directed, and just plain fun to imagine. And viscerally so alien-y; satisfying oozes and guts and blood and gore. :)

puppets & air travel

Interesting title, you say? Oh, it gets better.

On Wednesday I was invited by a friend to a dinner party at her apartment in Roosevelt Island. I had never been to this tiny island sandwiched between Manhattan & Queens. It felt like a resort, with one Main St flanked by glistening water. It is mostly residential with a lot of landscaping and a homey/retirement kind of feel. The apartment had a whole wall of windows with an amazing view of Manhattan and the water and for not much more rent that one pays for a non-doorman apartment downtown. The coolest part was they have a cable car that leaves Roosevelt Island and lands on 59th st and 2nd Ave in Manhattan. And this cable car is part of the subway system, so my monthly unlimited worked like a ticket! It sweeps you up alongside the bridge with an amazing view. What a commute!

On Thursday, I went to a show with friends of mine called- hold it- Puppetry of the Penis. Yes this show was exactly what the title implies. Their genital origami was hilarious, gross, astonishing and just silly. I saw "installations" like the hamburger, the turtle, the windsurfer- its endless. But surprisingly I almost enjoyed the opening comedic act as much as the actual show. They had Amy Schumer, who was on Last Comic Standing (she got 4th place). She was frakkin' hilarious. Truly had me in stitches- and also a lot dirtier than on on TV, so nice! She just had the best delivery and seemed like one of those people that would be so fun to go to dinner with and just laugh your ass off.

and TGIF!!!

Dept update!

Summoned to an important early morning meeting to find out...that our immediate boss is now the big boss! So wahoo, I guess. Doesn't much change anything except acknowledge that everything is still changing.

I also saw the secret 13th episode of Dollhouse, Joss Whedon's newest show. It was a fun dystopian glimpse of a future where people's memories & personalities can be wiped away through wireless technology and made into army zombies. Fun times! No, it was typical Joss- clear characters, nicely witty, strong females. I can see why Fox did not want to air it as the season finale. It's quite a deviation from the regular plot. A sort of a petit four; not quite related to the meal that came before, but delicious none the less. It felt more like an episode of Firefly (the Whedon space cowboy series) to me.

So ready for the weekend! Going to a new BBQ place in Williamsburg tomorrow where they purportedly sell beer by the gallon.

british guys singing

So I went to another Summer Play Festival play last friday and what a different tone it was from the first play, Tender! This play, Departure Lounge, was a frolicking dramedy about four UK guys in a Spanish airport waiting to fly back to London the summer after they ended school and before going to university. It was amazingly fun- I mean, four cute guys with delicious accents singing and dancing! It was quite light hearted and the guys really shined during their musical numbers. They had great voices and could really rock the small theater space. The writing was good enough; some sentimentality and everything wrapped up a little too easily, but it did the job of stringing all the songs together in a coherent whole.

It was interesting to see the range of different type of plays at the SPF. Tender was so wordy, intellectual, all about how to manipulate writing and the audience. Departure Lounge was more Broadway (actually very akin to Altar Boyz, an off Bway play that has run for years about a faux Christian boy band). I enjoyed both plays equally, but the BF got much more of a kick out of Departure Lounge. And he didn't fall asleep, so there you go.